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Thursday, September 1, 2016

Ned Yost Sort of Wants To Live Here

Ned Yost before he gained eight-hundred pounds. He ate those glasses before he ate the rest of the house.

Afternoon Readers,

"Your dog spent all day trying to escape."

The neighbor laughed while he said it, but as I tried to keep Mrs. Jones from leaping to her death on the patio, I also searched desperately for humor amid the chewed-up garden hose and a Barbie doll with no legs. "Did he?" I yelled back across the fence.

He nodded. "Yep. He nudged the lock on the fence for about twenty minutes. For a minute, I thought he had it. That dog's really something."

"He's something, all right. Thanks for telling me."

"Good luck!"

"Luck has nothing to do with it," I mumbled. "We're gonna need an exorcist."

Ned Yost, as it turns out, is a little more than we bargained for.

Ok, a lot more.

Getting a puppy is kind of like playing the lottery. You either win and the dog you picked out grows more or less to expectation. OR, the creature you bought on Craigslist ends up weighing eight hundred pounds and eats your oven. There's not really an in-between, at least where the Kellermans are concerned.

That's correct. All worldly possessions the Kellerman children see fit not to break, Ned Yost trots behind and ingests. That leaves Husband and I with exactly one pair of socks each and a 401k we're hoping the dog doesn't figure out how to log into. I've stopped waiting for the sun to wake me up, and, instead, listen for one of the children to shout, "Ned ate your mascara, Momma. How you gonna look pretty?"

I'll never look pretty again, children.

This is due to the fact, when he's not eating dryer sheets, the dog is thinking up ways he can escape the yard and and run toward freedom. Possibly the cat. No one's sure on this particular point because we don't know it's happened until it happens. And, by that point, I have a beleaguered old woman on my porch, trying to wrestle a muscular, Hershey-bar-colored lab up the porch steps. Last night wasn't any different.

"Oh. Hi, Sue."

"He got out again."

I shifted Mrs. Jones to my opposite hip and surveyed the situation. My small, greying neighbor looked like she'd just done a steeple chase and hit every ditch on the way down. Hair stuck out all over her head, and little beads of sweat trembled and splashed on the doorstep. "You took little bit to open the door. Everything ok?"

Quickly, I reached out and grabbed Ned by the collar, before I apologized. "Sorry. The baby was trying to base jump from the top of the stairs. I only have a few rules in life, but catching my offspring first and answering the door second is a non-negotiable."

Relieved, the little woman slumped against the house. "Can he jump the fence now?"

"I hope not."

"But you're not sure?"

"The only thing I'm sure of is that the baby is eating the credit card bill behind me. Thanks, Sue. We'll work on it."

Either the dog was getting the locks open or jumping fairly tall fences. Both options lacked appeal, but I decided to brief Husband about it the next day.

"Our dog's a menace to society."

Husband nodded sympathetically yet didn't pack the dog up and adopt him out immediately.

"He's getting out a lot."

"Mmm hmm."

"We need to tie everything shut or build him some sort of fiberglass cag-"

But that thought was interrupted by two loud thuds and a squeal. Three seconds later, glass tinkled on the ground as Ned Yost came flying into the house through the basement window.

Husband ran downstairs. "What the hell?"

I turned back to the stove and poked at almost-cooked hot dogs. "So, as I was saying. Maybe we enlist him in the Navy and see if they can straighten him out."

The moral of the story here is that we don't need anymore animals. Gerbils or hamsters might be ok, but even then. Are they good with locks?